David Kappos: Nominee for Patent and Trademark Director

Posted on Jun 30, 2009 12:55pm PDT

On June 18th President Obama nominated David Kappos for the position of Patent and Trademark Director. Currently Mr. Kappos is the Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Intellectual Property Law, for IBM. This includes managing IBM's substantial patent and trademark portfolios. Mr. Kappos also serves on several boards including the Intellectual Property Owners Association.

In 1983 Mr. Kappos graduated from the University of California Davis with a bachelor's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. That same year he joined IBM as a Development Engineer. Then in 1990 he earned his law degree from University of California Berkeley and began working as an IP law attorney for IBM. He has been with IBM his entire career.

What does this mean for the Patent office? In March 2009 Mr. Kappos testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee (place link to testimony through the aforementioned words) in which he spoke in support of the Patent Reform Act of 2009. He also testified that the US has not adapted well to the changes in the rest of the world as far as patents are concerned. According to him, this has led to low quality patents and excessive patent litigation. One can infer from his testimony that Mr. Kappos will work to raise the quality of patents that come out of the US Patent and Trademark office thus helping lower the patent litigation rate.

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